A prison officer addicted to cocaine was blackmailed into smuggling packages into jail by an inmate who found out about his drug habit, a court heard.

After discovering Gordon Milner’s secret, the inmate told the prison officer he should “make himself available to take packages in from the outside or the authorities would be ‘whispered to like a bird’,” said Jonathan Eley, defending.

“He knew that a prison officer using class A drugs would immediately be sacked because if it became known inside it could be used to blackmail the guard - which is what happened in this case.

HMP Gartree Warden Gordon Edward Milner outside Leicester Crown Court

“He was in between a rock and a hard place; he had to do as he was told or his dark secret would be revealed.”

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Mr Eley said Milner was told, and believed, the packages contained phones.

He said his client knew that taking mobile phones into prison was also a serious offence, but “his worry fell by the wayside and on two occasions he was passed two items to take in”.

Mr Eley told Leicester Crown Court Milner knew a mobile phone was in one of the packages, “and ran the risk there were SIM cards in there too”.

Milner admitted misconduct in a public office at HMP Gartree, near Market Harborough, where he worked.

Leicester Crown Court

He was jailed for 14 months.

About Milner’s belief that phones were in the packages, Judge Ebraham Mooncey told the defendant: “You can’t take people’s word like that.”

He suggested that drugs, knives or even a small gun could have been inside a package that Milner claimed not to have looked inside – although he stressed there was no evidence that anything other than phones or SIM cards were taken inside, and that was the basis upon which he was dealing with Milner.

What did the prosecution allege?

Milner (34), a married father-of-three, of Babington Road, Rothley, began working at HMP Gartree in March 2015.

The offending took place between January and April last year.

The court was told that it began when an inmate serving a life sentence for a “serious crime” found out that Milner was a drug addict via a drug dealer with whom Milner had had contact.

Neil Bannister, prosecuting, said there was evidence that at least 15 SIM cards were smuggled into the prison within the two sealed packages Milner accepted taking in.

He said the defendant was on duty in April last year when a prison drugs sniffer dog showed an interest in him, while staff were being vetted.

Although he had no drugs on him, his car was searched and some white powder – that was not analysed - was found with the defendant’s personal mobile phones, one of which contained incriminating text messages.

One text message, sent to an inmate by the defendant, read: “Yo need to talk. Gonna stop at end of month for quite a while. Things changing. New dogs and patrols 24/7 … if wanna do a couple of doubles in next two weeks cool, but then done.”

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That inmate had, by then, been transferred to HMP Ranby, Nottinghamshire, and when his cell was searched officers found 12 SIM cards, an SD card and a memory stick.

Phone cell site evidence also led to the police retrospectively tracing a January 2016 rendezvous the defendant had at Corley Services on the M6, near Coventry, where he collected a phone with a SIM card ending with the numbers 119.

The 119 SIM was active inside Gartree Prison the following day, along with two other sequential SIM numbers ending 118 and 117.

No mobile phones were ever recovered.

Gartree Prison in Leicestershire

What did the defendant's barrister say?

Mr Eley, mitigating, said: “He fell out with his partner and it led to him becoming depressed.

“He started drinking and a so-called friend introduced him to cocaine which he used to self-medicate.

“His dealer became a regular supplier and he was purchasing £400 worth a month and the drug dealer discovered he was a prison officer and the information was passed to a long time serving prisoner.”